Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Inciting Violence: Right-wing Blowhards Amp Up the Rhetoric

AltTulsa takes free speech seriously. We agree with the noted 20th-century philosopher, Madonna, who once said, "Free speech is better than sex."

But free speech has some limits, of course. You can't knowingly lie about a person and damage his or her reputation without facing a libel suit, for example. More seriously, speech that incites violence can and should be punished because it is harmful, so harmful that it goes beyond words to actions that cause injury, even death.

All of which leads us to the crazy talk permeating the right-wing airwaves and blogosphere these days, some of it blatantly erroneous and dangerously hyperbolic. We tend to discount most of this nonsense, but some of it can, in some cases, lead to actions that go well beyond speech.

Glenn Beck's particular brand of paranoia may have done just that in a recent case in California, a case with deadly results. Why do we say that? Because the shooter himself has said so.